A Certain Scientific Summer
by LonelyDiggin
Summary: Taking place during the Midsummer Festival, it is just a short, relaxing, side story. It focuses on the growing relations between my character and Misaka Mikoto. CLICK MY PROFILE TO CHECK OUT MAIN VOLUMES.
1. Summary

Taking a break from my usual writings:

This is just a relaxing side story derived from the series "Toaru Kagaku No Railgun." It happens at the Midsummer festival. It's very relaxed, just a short story with more fun than a vlog, and focuses on the growing relationship between my character and Misaka. I am still working on other stories about the later parts of the series, and I even did a story of before my character came to the city. I will edit and upload them as soon as possible, I promise. Thanks for reading, enjoy!


	2. Midsummer Festival

Midsummer Festival:

Oh man, what should I do today? I wondered as I walked down the busiest streets of Academy City. It's Summer vacation again, the mild, morning Summer heat flowing down gently on my back. I decided to go and buy breakfast from a nearby vendor. I really couldn't care any less about calories and letting the thought of it ruin my break. I thought of what should I get. Hmm... I've heard of the great crepes they served in this area. Even Misaka recommended to me once. I walked up to the warm familiar looking tent, there wasn't much people there. Yeah right, no one wakes up this early in holidays.

"Hi, one crepe with chocolate, and one sweet, iced matcha please." "Thank you!"

Academy City is still a country, but within the boundaries of Japan, people here are mostly Japanese. We even use their currency, but there's lots of western culture here too, if you look at the Italian, or French places, diners, coffee shops. I've heard that the Tokiwadai dorm room has this European decoration to it. My apartment area is surrounded by a group of buildings in some regular, modern architecture. Not as tall as a New York skyscraper, or as densely packed as the concrete jungles of Shanghai. I sat down on a bench to eat, when my phone ran. Misaka texted me:

"Hey! How's it going? I have this school activity that is being hosted this day every year, it's called the Midsummer Festival. It's basically visiting the Tokiwadai buildings, and have different activities. I can invite friends, do you want to come? I just thought you might be interested"

I thought to myself, sure, I mean, I have nothing to do. I sat there then in silence, digging in my food slowly, taking bites at my jam, sugar, chocolate, and whipped cream infused treat. After finishing breakfast, I decided to try out the festival they are hosting.

I was happy she wanted me to come, so I texted back and saying thanks. I got closer to her and her friends last time ever since I offered to help take down Big Spider. She was one of the few that understood me, not liking people who discriminate toward our kind too. Most important thing of me, a little uncertain at first. I'm less of a stranger to this place now. Much less since I came.

I got on a bus to Tokiwadai dorm areas, she told me to come as soon as possible. It stopped at the bus station, as I got off, I noticed that this is the district designed specifically for Tokiwadai dorms. It's like a huge garden, that's not closed so it doesn't have a clear boundary. You have to venture inside to find the closed gates leading tot he dorms. A couple of girls are already outside waiting.

"Hey!" I greeted them.

"Good morning! The festival starts later, do you know anyone here?"

"Misaka Mikoto told me to come early." They let me in.

The first time I saw the dorms, I loved it. I gasped. It's majestic. It's a piece of art that is so... beautiful to an unnecessary level, too complicated to just appreciate it at first glance. I stood there just observing, it has a variety of traditional architecture styles from Europe. With British Victorian era styled dorm buildings that looked expensively beautiful in every detail, with freshly painted walls with carved in designs, and the windows were carved into the walls too, large rectangular windows with curved tops. Other unspecified buildings that looked French and German castles looked uniformly arranged from any angle. Yes, I have a little bit of this geek personality. Just a little to "sharpen" my personality. Recreation places looked like another style of art, swimming pools decorated with marbles with this Italian, Roman design, and huge flat fields for tennis and soccer. The dorm building Misaka told me came into my sight.


	3. Coffee

I slowly walked went to the house she told me, and pressed the doorbell. Misaka opened the door for me and I went in. The inside weren't disappointing either, just as beautiful as the outside. I walked further in, through a pair of wooden door and into the cafeteria. There she was, sitting on one of the wooden beside a beautifully polished stone table.

"Good morning." She greeted cheerfully.

"Hi! Good morning!" I said back. She was still eating breakfast.

"Do you want anything? Help yourself."

"Thank you so much!" She really thinks me as a friend now, she is actually pretty easy going and friendly despite the other protective, superhero aspect of her life. Those two sides don't actually really contradict each other. She probably understands troubles the we as Espers might face. She probably understood my past condition of how I used to get in trouble with local thugs and uncertainties about my powers. I don't think about that a lot anymore, because I just couldn't get used to it so quick. Now even so much things happened, local rogue gangs and rogue Esper powers, I seemed to have an explanation for all. Why I came, and how I chose to help. I felt my life collided with the Academy City world but somehow I did not regret

it. I poured myself some coffee, and I followed my "ritual" of consumption as a coffee lover.

I always drink it black first to taste it fully, then add milk or cream. Adding anything to spice up the drink without even tasting its original flavors is a huge No No. I really don't know why I'm so obsessed with coffee or tea. The caffeine always seemed to boost my mood. Maybe it just an Esper thing, we use our brains a lot, it plays a huge role, used for anything from chatting to calculating the velocity of a bullet. So maybe highly caffeinated drinks don't give us the negative effects, we only absorb the positive effects and use it up. The special part of an Esper brain in charge of superpowers function just like breathing, it works on it's own and only gets used when we actually use our powers. My brain wandered off. I thought back to half a year ago, about learning powers because it's so intriguing there were some parts I'd like to get straight.

I remembered studying a phenomena called "Personal Reality." Personal reality is the concept of the Power d Curriculum, which is hard to explain. Personal reality means the way we see as our reality, differentiating from the real reality, like the Schrödinger Cat, is it dead or alive? Basically it is how we think reality is in our own Esper world, the stronger we believe, the easier it is to improve power level. But there are cases of people going mad because of being lost in their PR. The Power Curriculum were the main experiments I talked about briefly. To improve powers and to have a better understanding of it. For example we know how Misaka's uses electricity, she can manipulate electrons in particles, forming electric currents , This allows her to utilize it as a weapon, and to control electromagnetic fields.

The thing is, we only know how electric energy works, but don't know how brain manipulates it, as I said, it works subconsciously. No one can explain one hundred percent what is an Esper, how does it work. We only know the science of how powers work, but not the nature of it, and why is it like that. We have the term "Personal Reality" to temporarily have an explanation for the mechanics, nobody knows how it really works to produce powers. There's dozens of questions scientists wanted to be answered, what causes a person to gain this ability? Or what affects the kind of power a person get.

As I said, the experiments weren't cruel, they were mainly to access power levels and to have more solid knowledge about the nature of it. The problem about the Power Curriculum is that it uses external factors like hypnosis, hallucinogens, or high frequency waves to manipulate a person's brain. This makes it suitable for power training, assessments, and for scientists to research and study. It might do damage to the brain, but no one can link anything to the Power Curriculum program. People only know that Espers might not be suitable for certain activities. In the last six years the UN and the Academy City government had 10 meetings to clear things out.

Why did I suddenly think about this? I'm not in school. I found myself staring blankly out the window, and looking at Misaka finishing the last of her breakfast.

"I have to go and prepare!" She left. I just realized that the room had already been decorated.


	4. Fun

It's time, people came rushing in from the front door of the main building, I recognized the girl with flowers in her head, her name was Uiharu right? Another taller girl with straight black hair followed, she was not Mii, she was a different girl, a friend of hers? Where's Misaka? I turned my head and almost screamed out loud. She was in a maid uniform! So is the other Tokiwadai students, they stood there passing out papers, maps, and introduction to the place.

"...thank you" I said as I took one from a girl. It's about the different activities they are holding.

"Onee-sama!" I heard Kuroko's voice. A couple of guys went to Misaka, to take one of the papers.

"Hey, you look great! Mind if we take a picture?" One guy asked, trying to hide his greed.

"No, sorry. You can't take pictures here." "Clack! Clack!" A camera flashed. Misaka became impatient.

"I said, no photos..." she noticed Kuroko snapping pictures like a professional photographer, lying down at perfect angles to see Misaka's undies and taking pics.

"Wow! Sissy, you are too much of a tomboy! Stop wearing shorts under your dress! Especially in a maid uniform" Misaka almost snapped right on the spot. She clenched her teeth. An electric shock sprung out and connected with the camera. The camera went out with a buzz, smoke bellowing out. Why is Kuroko so obsessed with Misaka? I felt a little creeped out. Thank God she didn't pay much attention to me. All the guys got afraid and left.

"Misaka-San!" A girl wearing an apron called out to her. "Can you help me with kitchen stuff?"

"I'm coming!" Misaka left to avoid the awkwardness.

More people were rushing in, I wanted to look at some of the activities, so I looked at the paper I took from the girl. I decided to go to the first one. The first one involved making shapes out of very fine sugar fiber, very cool. Tokiwadai seems fun, but I've heard about that it only accepts girls. I took a cupcake, and took a bite. it tasted awesome. It had the egg flavors in it, also other fruits, but all made with fine sugar. What a pity to destroy such beautiful things.

The second activity I been to is an exhibition about the relationship of different factors and how they affect what kind Esper powers a human opens up to, and in what way a human's brain is affected. It is only a basic understanding, and the data only had a weak correlation. It also has a small model explaining how Railgun works, how electric current that flows creates an electromagnetic force to propel a coin three times the speed of sound. The Third activity was a fun one, about different experiments chemistry or physics, some I done before, others I never tried before. My favorite one was making an arc welding device using auto transmitters and car batteries. I wondered around, where did Misaka go? Last time I saw her she went into the kitchen to help with snacks and to escape Kuroko. I grabbed a small coke and walked out of the exhibition, skipping some rooms.

There was an auction outside, selling unwanted items. A young girl just bought a Gekota figure. The next item was a Gekota comic book, immediately, I heard a familiar voice. Shouted out quick before everyone could even rack up the price. It was Kuroko.

"20000 Yen!" Everyone went silent. Why would she go crazy for a comic book? I saw her pervertedly sniff the comic book over and over again, I can already guess why. The comic book belonged to Misaka, she was selling it on the auction. I decided to go with the flow and bought a cool looking pen made out of a real bullet casing.

All this happened in a blur. I sat at the audience. A girl announced an end of the day performance by guess who? Misaka Mikoto! I was surprised, that's where she went. The day finished with a beautiful violin solo performed by Misaka. It was a simple song, but the way she highlighted certain notes and controlled the tone made it sound beautiful. The fest ended at the expected time.

"Good bye!" I said.

"Bye! Thanks for coming." Misaka said back.

The dorm areas were crowded with people leaving, I slowly made my way through. I savoured this day as I prepared to go back to my boring summer.


End file.
